A Wolf Once More Was He
by grumkinsnark
Summary: Eliot Spencer has incapacitated thirteen hired guns while bleeding and bruised from head to toe. He's liberated Croatia. He can do and conquer anything. Except, it happens, a cold. Parker, superlative thief and evader, seems to be in a similar quandary.
1. Part I

This is somewhat based on the leveragexchange prompt "Eliot's sick. The others look after him." Also, my virgin fic in this fandom, so be nice. =)

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**A Wolf Once More Was He**

* * *

"Eliot, you're sick."

Great. Just great. Out of all the people who would break into his apartment, it's _her_.

"Don't touch me."

"You're sick."

"Am not. I don't get sick."

"You look like hell. And you've used up all the Kleenex."

"Leave me alone."

She smiles that irksome smile and hands him a new box, along with some aspirin.

"Move over. This is exciting."

Grudgingly, Eliot does, grimacing at the pounding behind his eyes and temples as a result.

She hands him a tissue without looking away from the TV screen, and he takes it (manfully, of course).

He thinks she gave him a sedative instead of aspirin, because he falls asleep within minutes to the first game of the frickin' _Stanley Cup_, and when he wakes again, it's dark outside.

The game long over, the channel's now playing a loop of an infomercial, and he turns bleary eyes to his left, only to see her passed out in a not entirely unamusing fashion, face lit up in the darkness by the dull glow of the television.

Later, he'd convince even himself that it was just the fever talking, but as he looks at her, realizes that she'd forgone Hardison's bar hopping proposal for watching hockey and contentedly pretending she didn't hear his failed attempts at not sniffling, he thinks maybe being sick once in a while isn't so bad after all.


	2. Part II

This was only meant to be a one-shot, and focusing only on Eliot, but I couldn't resist doing the flip side. So. Hope you enjoy.

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**A Wolf Once More Was He**

**Part II

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**

He first noticed it when they were on the job—a perfectly routine, corrupt businessman, steal and bail, yadda, yadda, yadda. Sophie and Nate were doing the crowd mingling and recon; Hardison was tapping into the security system; he and Parker were in charge of exit plans. He was in the middle of trying to convince her that he was not—repeat, _NOT_—going to rappel, when it happened.

He stopped arguing and stared at her. "Did you just sneeze?" he asked.

Never once had he heard her so much as sniffle. "What? No," she objected, her voice perfectly level.

In fact, if Eliot hadn't been flawlessly versed in detecting every nuanced discrepancy in a person's behavior (not to mention spent the last felt-like-decades with her and the other three), he would have probably believed her.

As it was, however, he _did_ know her. "That was definitely a sneeze," he persisted, folding his arms over his chest.

"Guys, not the time," said Nate over the comms quietly. "You're in the archives room—it's dusty. Get over it."

Parker looked at him with her "told you so" expression, which he promptly ignored. "Showtime," she said, looking at the monitors as she found an exit. She shoved a harness into his chest and grinned. "Follow me."

Eliot groaned, knowing he was beat. "Wrap this up," he said over the earpiece. "Parker and I are out. We'll secure your exit, but can only guarantee you about four minutes."

"Copy that," said Sophie, speaking for both her and Nate. Hardison echoed the sentiments, albeit with more rambling verbosity.

It went off without a hitch—well, except for the fifteen minutes or so it took Eliot to recover from rappelling down forty flights by a rope that evidently hadn't been fully tested for his weight before he was pushed off the roof (a fact that, naturally, Parker had neglected to mention until they were on the ground).

* * *

Hours after the con finds Nate already headed to bed, Sophie and Hardison also off to their respective homes. As for Eliot, he's likewise planning on leaving for his apartment, as soon as he steals some beers and chips from the kitchen.

That is, until he hears a cough that was obviously meant to be subdued but didn't quite succeed. Frowning, he places his requisitions on the counter and looks into the conference room. It's dark—as expected—and it takes his eyes a minute to adjust before he sees the dim illumination of a familiar head of blonde hair. He flicks on the lights enough to see but not blind, and takes a step into the room.

"Parker?" he asks, wary at seeing her stretched across three of the uncomfortable chairs, a pillow over her face.

She moans in response.

"What the hell're you doing?" he continues, walking up next to her.

Gently, he pries the pillow from her hands, and tries not to laugh. Her face is the epitome of misery, hair lank, nose red, and eyes bright with fever.

"I'm fine," she says, promptly coughing spectacularly.

"Clearly."

"Go _away_," she groans, yanking the pillow back with surprising force. "Let me suffer in peace. Without your smug face."

"I would never," replies Eliot with an expression identical to what Parker had accused him of.

She turns on her side, back to him.

Taking pity, Eliot picks her up with little more effort than carrying two beers, entirely disregarding her squirming and complaints. He lays her on the couch and, finding no blanket, shrugs off his sweatshirt and tosses it to her. After a few more moments of glaring, she pulls on the sizes-too-large garment and wraps her arms around her.

"Hope you're proud of yourself," she mumbles, keeping her eyes firmly on him.

"Absolutely," he replies. He grabs a bottle of Heineken, the bag of Doritos, a book from Nate's bookcase, and shoves Parker's legs over, taking a seat on the end of the furniture. Throwing a shit-eating grin the blonde, he sips his beer and opens the book cover, enjoying the whole situation more than he should.

Parker stays awake for a while simply out of defiance, but ultimately, her illness whelms her willpower, and she falls into slumber. Eliot's only mildly surprised when he hears her rather ungraceful snores, but a flick to her arm quiets her.

He's unaware of time passing, discovers that the silence punctuated only by Parker's stuffy breathing and the crinkle of the chips bag is oddly peaceful. He finishes his beer sometime around three, and has all intention of getting another when he notices that Parker's feet had somehow managed to overtake his lap. He can be a son of a bitch sometimes—all right, _a lot_ of the time—but he can't bring himself to be one now. With a sigh, he decides against the liquor, just resituates himself on the cushions and starts chapter six.

* * *

When Nate fumbles his way downstairs at nine-ish, he's not as shocked as he wishes he were at seeing that he's not alone in his apartment. To his chagrin, an unannounced guest spending the night had happened enough times to where he almost anticipates it, anticipates pouring an extra cup of coffee and laying out another bowl and spoon for cereal.

Granted, he didn't quite expect to see Eliot asleep with his hair curtaining his face (and a half-eaten bag of Doritos that had fallen to the floor) and a similarly asleep Parker who had found a way to finagle herself so her head lies against his stomach, her torso swallowed up in what Nate, with raised eyebrows, recognizes as Eliot's pullover.

He has more than half a mind to awaken at least the hitter, both because he knows Eliot would want him to, and because he doesn't want to be the reason Eliot breaks his self-imposed ninety minutes of sleep a night rule. But, seeing the two of them with a kind of near-innocence that he knows he'd never see while they're conscious, he merely chuckles and walks into the kitchen to make some coffee as soundlessly as possible.

Sophie bursts into the condo sometime later with a new case, and doesn't notice Nate's houseguests jump awake and apart as if burned, too preoccupied with coercing him to consider the job.

Throughout her briefing—as annotated colorfully by Hardison—Nate surreptitiously watches Eliot and Parker, observing that they don't act as though anything had happened; as though Parker hadn't fallen asleep on Eliot's lap and they'd just gotten Nate's call to come in a mere twenty minutes ago.

He doubts Sophie and Hardison notice how Eliot's eye passes over Parker every so often, as if to watch for any unusual weaknesses. And he doubts they notice him pass a tissue nonchalantly over to her.

Most of all, Nate doubts they notice that, months and months later when Parker picks up some virus from an overseas job, there's a novel lying next to Eliot, Parker's head under his arm, both sleeping unconcernedly.

Nate smiles and grabs some coffee.

Sophie and Hardison never pick up on it, and Nate doesn't plan on apprising them. He may often be cold-hearted, misanthropic, and sometimes greedy, but he wouldn't give up seeing the hitter and the thief's child-like expressions, let alone caused by _each other's_ company, for all the money in the world.


End file.
